A season of dated departures published in one sitting, each one holding a real vehicle with a real number of seats and the guide who is taking it. Travellers, agents and hotel desks all book against the same count, a deposit is taken while they book, and the balance sits as an invoice you can see rather than a note in a folder.
Blu VoyagesBook online
Coast day tripSat 7:30 AM · 4 seats left$95.00
Mountain day tripTue 8:00 AM · 16-seat coach$110.00
Five-day tourMon to Fri · MinibusBook
Seats leftSat 4Tue 11Sat 16
Booked online
3:40 AM
Middle of the night here, afternoon there
Deposit
$23.75
25% held the Saturday seat
Coach and guide
Both free
Or the departure is not offered
A booking system for tour operators is judged on arithmetic rather than on the diary: how many seats are left, who is driving, and who still owes what.
A tour that runs Tuesdays and Saturdays from April goes up once, as a series with a last date on it, and every departure in it is separately bookable with its own count. October clears itself.
A vehicle is a bookable thing in its own right, so a departure is only offered when the seats, the bus and somebody to lead it are all genuinely free together, not when the date happens to be blank.
Take a percentage or a fixed deposit while they are booking, and raise the rest as an invoice off the same booking. What is Paid, Unpaid and Overdue is a list rather than a folder, and a reminder is one click.
A hotel desk or a local agent books on a traveller’s behalf from the same page. On the paid plans the seats are held rather than taken until you approve it, so nobody sells your last four while you are on the road.
An operator’s bookings arrive four ways (the page, the phone, an email somebody forwards, an agent who rang the office) and overselling happens because each of those is written down somewhere different. Put every one of them into the same calendar and there is exactly one number for Saturday. A booking taken on the phone comes off the count the moment it is entered, the page shows what is genuinely left in the same second, and the manifest you print on Friday night is the manifest, rather than one of three documents about it.
A departure that runs Monday to Friday takes the guide and the vehicle for the whole of that week, and the mistake every spreadsheet makes is treating it as five entries that each happen to be busy. Booked as one thing with a start and an end, it holds everything it needs for its whole length, so the Wednesday day trip cannot be sold against the same coach, and a guide who is on the mountain until Friday is not offered for a Thursday morning. The traveller books the trip once, for what the trip costs, rather than five times.
Ten past four on a Thursday. Saturday’s seven-thirty goes out on a sixteen-seat coach, and the seat count currently exists in three places: a wall planner, a spreadsheet on the office machine, and a printed manifest somebody has been adding to in biro since Tuesday.
Finding out which of the three is right means reading all of them against the inbox, and it takes the rest of the afternoon whether or not anything is wrong.
An operator’s problem was never that bookings are hard to take. It is that a departure is a real vehicle with a fixed number of seats, and everything that changes how many are left arrives somewhere different. Picktime gives the departure one count, holds the coach and the guide against it, and keeps what each booking still owes on the booking rather than in a folder.
List each tour with its length, its price per person and the number you can genuinely carry, then put its departures up as a series (Tuesdays and Saturdays from April to October) so the whole season goes on in one sitting rather than a month at a time.
A minibus, a coach, a boat: each one is a bookable thing with its own capacity, and each guide keeps their own days and the tours they lead. A departure is then only ever offered when the seats, the vehicle and somebody to run it are free at the same time.
Set a percentage or a fixed deposit per tour, so the date is held by money rather than by an email, and raise the balance as an invoice against the same booking. Say how late a traveller may cancel, so a place given back is given back while it can still be sold.
The free plan is a plan, not a trial. There is no date at which it stops, no card to add, and nothing that quietly turns off in a fortnight.
A departure lands in the calendar you and your guides already have open, and the paid plans sync it both ways, so it moves there when it moves here. Deposits and balances run through PayPal, or through Stripe and Square on the paid ones, and the booking page goes behind a Book Now button on the site travellers already found rather than living somewhere they have to be sent.
Picktime runs in a phone browser as well as a laptop, and there are iOS and Android apps, so Saturday’s manifest is readable at the kerb at half seven rather than only from the office.
It depends on whether the problem is distribution or arithmetic. If most of your seats are sold through resellers and marketplaces, you are shopping for a channel manager. If you sell direct and the pain is seat counts, vehicles and balances, that is a booking system, which is what Picktime is, free for a single operator, with no commission and no per-booking fee.
Picktime’s free plan covers a page of dated departures, a seat count on each one, traveller records and email notifications on every booking and cancellation, with no card and no end date. It is a plan rather than a trial, so nothing switches off after a fortnight.
An itinerary builder and a booking system are two different tools and most operators run both. The builder writes and prices the trip document; the booking system sells the dates, holds the seats and takes the money. Picktime is the second of those, and it does not try to be the first.
Yes, on the paid plans. Set the tour up as a series (every Tuesday and Saturday from April to October, say) with a last date on it. Every departure in the series is separately bookable with its own seat count, and the season clears itself when it ends rather than sitting in next year’s calendar.
Yes. Charge a percentage or a fixed deposit at the point of booking, which is what actually holds a date booked six months out, then raise the balance as an invoice against the same booking. Paid, Unpaid and Overdue are a list you can read, and you can send a reminder or record a payment from it.
Yes, and the point is that it holds however the booking arrived. A departure carries one count, and a booking entered on the phone takes seats off it exactly as a booking made on the page does. Once it is full the page says so.
Yes. They book from the same page, and on the paid plans the tours where you want the final say hold the seats rather than taking them until you approve. Each departure point can also keep its own hours and its own page, so an agent in one town is not offered the other town’s programme.
It depends which side of the counter you are on, and Picktime is only useful on one of them. An agent resells somebody else’s product and needs to reach inventory they do not own, which is a job for a GDS or a channel connection. Picktime is for the operator who owns the departure: one seat count per date, holding whether the seat was taken by a traveller on your page, by you on the phone or by an agent booking on a client’s behalf.
Nothing answers that until you say what is being booked, because these products divide on that and not on price. One person in one slot is a different shape from a departure that is sixteen seats sold to eleven separate parties, and most tools only do the first properly. If yours is the second kind, the test is whether a single count survives a seat sold on the phone, a seat sold by an agent and a seat sold on your own page. Picktime holds one count across all three, free for a single operator.
Boats and kit A course across two weekends, one boat and one set of kit, all held together.
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Hulls and skippers A jetty turning over every two hours, and a charter needing a boat and a skipper at once.
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The hire desk The hire desk, the function room and the launch slot, all on one calendar.
See campground schedulingFree forever for a single operator. No card, no trial clock, and your season can be on a page this afternoon.
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